Opening New Doors Amid Plant Closings

In 1989, when the Pittsburgh-based Braun`s Bakery, maker of Wonder Bread, was purchased by IIT-Continental and relocated to Philadelphia, Pearl Alexander lost her job.

A baker at Braun`s and member of Bakery Workers Local 12, Alexander was one of 250 employees out on the street.

So Alexander and her co-workers decided to fight back-not to save their old jobs, which were gone, but to create new ones and bring economic hope to the community.

As a result of their efforts, ground was broken last year for a new Pittsburgh bakery, City Pride Bakery, developed and owned by regional investors, community groups and the workers, including Alexander.

Instead of being unemployed, Alexander has a good job and also is part of management as an employee-owner. City Pride, a $10 million company expected to make 8 million loaves of bread a year plus other products, has 120 workers. When it is fully operative, it will employ 350-30 more than Braun`s had.

In recent years, hundreds of thousands of U.S. manufacturing workers have lost their jobs because of plant closings. Few have been able to do anything about the situation and feel powerless and desperate.

Alexander and her colleagues put together an industrial renewal project with $12.6 million in funding with the help of the Steel Valley Authority, an alliance of labor and community groups; the Tri-State Conference, a coalition of religious, labor and community organizations; and their union.

The Steel Valley Authority and Tri-State Conference are affiliates of the Federation for Industrial Retention & Renewal, a national organization based in Chicago that works with community groups facing a plant shutdown.

The federation, founded in 1972 when Youngstown Steel in Ohio shut down, offers free technical and grass-roots organizing advice, financial support and information about government laws and subsidies. It helps develop legal and economic strategies to prevent closings and to create new options.

The federation has 32 community-based affiliates and packs a wallop nationwide that far outweighs its budget of $185,000 and its staff of two.

Among member groups are ICA Group, Boston; Southerners for Economic Justice, Durham, N.C.; the Center for Neighborhood Technology and the South Chicago Jobs Authority, Chicago; Fuerza Unida, San Antonio; and the Seattle Worker Center, Seattle.

The federation is active at Kaplan Industries, a meat-packing plant in Lakeland, Fla., where 500 non-union workers lost their jobs when bankruptcy was declared in 1990; in San Antonio, where former Levi Strauss workers are fighting for benefits after the plant`s closing; in New York, at Taystee Baking Co., where 500 workers lost jobs after its purchase by Stroehman`s; and in El Paso, where garment workers are challenging the proliferation of sweatshops.

The closing of plants not only has the immediate effect of job loss, but also a long-term ripple effect that ``destroys communities and leads to the abandonment of downtown areas,`` said Jim Benn, executive director of the federation, 3411 W. Diversey Ave.

Benn, who has a bachelor`s degree in American studies from Pennsylvania State University, became involved in plant closings while working at U.S. Steel`s Duquesne Works in Pittsburgh, which was shut down in 1984.

The lesson learned from City Pride`s creation, Benn says, is that jobs disappear or are relocated ``if all economic decisions are left exclusively to the manufacturer.``

The federation also helps industrial plants stay in business. In 1991, it was alerted by its affiliate, the Calumet Project for Industrial Jobs in East Chicago, Ind., that LaSalle Steel Co. in Hammond might go into bankruptcy.

``We shared information with management, including about how to get government contracts with subsidies,`` said Benn. ``Today, LaSalle still is in business, and the jobs that were threatened-some 900-are there today.``

Workers threatened with job loss often react with understandable fear, Benn says. ``But there`s no justification for letting the problem be resolved by other people,`` he said. ``The government acts better when there is organized intervention from workers and communities.``

Sonia Y. Angell, field organizer for the federation, has a degree in journalism and political science from Indiana University. She has served with the Peace Corps in Nepal as a teacher trainer and was a coordinator for the National Puerto Rican Forum Inc.

Angell has helped organize a network of labor, community and environmental groups in California to discuss the effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement and defense cuts. ``We`ll work together to support local efforts to save jobs,`` she said.

Working on preventing plant closings and empowering workers ``seemed a natural progression`` to Angell from the Peace Corps and job training.

``For me, even when there is some small shift in the way the government reacts, I feel personal success,`` said Angell. ``There`s so much

unemployment, and you see business setting the priorities to make profits. The community`s needs often are ignored. So each little change, each job saved, gives me hope.``